MagazinePicture Stories

After 30 years, Hubble is still revealing new mysteries of the universe

Operating far past its expected life span, the telescope captures data that answer some of space’s biggest questions—and make glorious images.

Photograph by NASA/ESA AND Z. LEVAY (STSCI/AURA)
Read Caption
A colorized composite image captures the Veil Nebula. It’s a portion of the doughnut-shaped Cygnus Loop, the result of a supernova explosion several thousand years ago.
Photograph by NASA/ESA AND Z. LEVAY (STSCI/AURA)
By Daniel Stone

PUBLISHED

This story appears in the May 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.
View Images
How did early Hubble images compare with even high-quality images from ground-based telescopes? Part of the first image Hubble made (above right) is about 50 percent sharper than an image of the same area of space taken with a ground-based telescope (above left).

In 1990 NASA and the European Space Agency launched a telescope designed to peer deep into the universe. Above Earth’s atmosphere, the satellite would see without distortions from air, light, and pollution. Scientists said it would last, at best, for a decade.

View Images
Known as the Horsehead Nebula, this celestial wonder was discovered in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming. Her distinguished career in the United States included cataloging thousands of stars.
1/11
View Slideshow
The Crab Nebula surrounds a superdense neutron star.… Read More
Planetary nebulae emit material expelled from dying stars.… Read More
The Egg Nebula glows 3,000 light-years away from Earth.… Read More
A multi-wavelength view of the Crab Nebula shows the gradient of temperature.… Read More
The Carina Nebula’s gas-and-dust cloud spans three light-years.… Read More
This faraway group of galaxies is named Arp 273.… Read More
This comet was discovered in 1892 by Britain’s Edwin Holmes, and named for him. In this 2007 photo, comet Holmes had recently undergone an explosive outburst that caused it to be more than a million times brighter than it was previously.… Read More
Scientists believe that this supernova was created when a massive star exploded in about 165,000 B.C., but its light didn’t reach Earth until 1987. Hubble made this image in 1994 of what’s now called supernova 1987A.… Read More
In early 2020—long after scientists had expected Hubble to stop working—the telescope’s Wide Field Camera made this image of the Great Nebula in Orion, some 1,500 light-years from Earth.… Read More
Officially identified as NGC 6543, it’s nicknamed the Cat’s Eye Nebula—and is thought to be a thousand years old. Hubble documented structures within the nebula that are clues to how it evolved.… Read More
The prolific stellar nursery known as R136 is thought to be the largest and most active star-forming region in the vicinity of the Milky Way. Some stars seen here as diamond shaped may be more than a hundred times as massive as Earth’s sun.… Read More
View Images
Images that capture x-ray light are combined with images that capture infrared light to make this view of the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. The turbulent region is home to stars in all phases of evolution.
View Images
Astronomers studied 10,000 stars in Hubble pictures to make this composite image and to learn about the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy. Light from our own galaxy is the most recently produced and most vibrant. Several maintenance missions kept Hubble in shape to capture data that the Space Telescope Science Institute then deciphered and colorized to create stunning celestial images.

Thirty years later, Hubble continues to fascinate. Its famous images have helped astronomers answer some of space’s biggest questions, from How old is the universe? (13.8 billion years old) to Do black holes actually exist? (yes, with frightening ferocity). In 1995 astronomer Bob Williams had a zany idea: What if NASA pointed Hubble at a seeming dark spot in the sky? That yielded the magical discovery that even where the human eye sees nothing, thousands of galaxies exist.

View Images
NASA considers Hubble, which orbits 340 miles above Earth, to be one of its best investments.

“One of Hubble’s lasting achievements will be how it showed the public the wonders of the universe,” says Kenneth Sembach, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which oversees Hubble’s science program.

Next year NASA plans to launch the more sensitive James Webb Space Telescope—but Hubble’s not done yet. Together, the two will craft an even more complex portrait of the universe and look for answers to a question that never gets old: What else is out there?

Daniel Stone is a former writer for National Geographic. He is the author of The Food Explorer, on the botanical adventures of food spy David Fairchild.

More on This Topic

Why NASA plans to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid
Traveler
The modern world edges into one of the cradles of humankind
The moon may have stretched early Earth into a potato shape

More from the Magazine

The Hittites' fast war chariots threatened mighty Egypt
Rolling over enemies, the Hittite fleet looked unstoppable when they fought Egypt in the biggest chariot battle ever.
Fast and lethal, the Black Death spread more than a mile per day
Last Wild Places
How an unprecedented gift built a legacy of conservation in South America
Explore the mesmerizing physics of animal locomotion